When was the Empire Windrush ship built? - The Saturday Briefing

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The 55 Independent Squadron board Empire Windrush at Southampton to fight in the Korean war

Q We have heard a great deal about the Empire Windrush ship bringing West Indian families here in the 1950s but can you tell me when the ship was built and what her name was before she became a troopship in the Second World War?

Edwards, Cardiff

A She was originally a passenger liner and cruise ship called the Monte Rosa, built and launched in Germany in 1930. During the Second World War she became a troopship for the German navy but at the end of the war was acquired by the UK as a prize of war.

In 1948 she brought 1,027 passengers and two stowaways from Jamaica to London of whom 693 said they intended to settle in the UK. She continued to be used as a troopship until 1954 when she sank in the Mediterranean with the loss of four crew.

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QI’ve been watching re-runs of the hospital drama ER on TV which bring back lots of memories. I have just watched an episode in which two lads robbed a small shop. Was one of them Ewan McGregor? It looked and sounded like him, or was I dreaming?

Mrs L Copping, Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset

AWell spotted! It is indeed the young Ewan McGregor. The episode is called The Long Way Around and he plays a convenience store robber named Duncan Stewart. The episode was shown in 1997, making McGregor about 25 or 26 when it was filmed.

QI was wondering about the concept of tutting (to show disapproval). Is it a purely British phenomenon and what does it mean in other cultures? Chris Schuman, Reading, Berkshire

AThe "tut" or "tsk" sound, made by clicking the tongue against one's upper palate to express dissatisfaction, is something the British have been doing since at least the 16th century though the earliest reference in the Oxford English Dictionary to a duplicated "tut-tut" of disapproval goes back only to 1873.

Surprisingly the "dental click", as linguists call it, seems to occur in most European languages including Hungarian, Russian and Portuguese as well as Spanish, French and German all of which use it in exactly the same way as in English.

In other languages the same sound is used as a negative response to yes-no questions.

QIn several gangster/Mafia films I've heard of people "running numbers" for mob bosses. What does this actually mean?

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AThe "numbers game" was a sort of illegal lottery run by gangsters in the US. The object was to pick three numbers to match the last three digits in a number to be published the next day.

It was usually conducted in poor neighbourhoods with small amounts of money being staked by many people and the bets being taken by the gangsters, giving them a steady rake-off (not dissimilar to today's legal lotteries actually!)

QWe had a holiday in North Yorkshire last week and were discussing how many miles of dry stone walls there were in England. Can you enlighten us?

Sheila Sherwood, by email

AWe have been making dry stone walls in this country for more than 5,000 years so it is no surprise there are so many of them.

A survey in 1988 reported that the Yorkshire Dales alone have 5,000 miles of dry stone walls, while Winship Walling, members of the Dry Stone Walling Association, tell us there are 69,926 miles of dry stone walls in England alone, of which 38 per cent are showing major signs of deterioration.

QWhat is the precise meaning of the word "Sutton" in such places as Sutton Coldfield in Birmingham, Sutton Bonington in Nottinghamshire or the London borough of Sutton?

Irene Baird, Loughborough, Leicestershire

AThe names of all those Suttons come from the Old English "suth" and "tun" meaning "South Farm" or "South Town".

QCan you tell me if Professor Stephen Hawking, who died recently, has been buried in Westminster Abbey?

Mrs Harries, London

ANot yet but he will be. He died on March 14 and a memorial service for him was held at Great St Mary's Church in Cambridge on March 31 followed by a private funeral. His ashes will be interred in Westminster Abbey close to the remains of Sir Isaac Newton.

QCan you explain why there are no "Roads" in the City of London? For instance, there is Liverpool Street, Lombard Street, Lower Thames Street, Ludgate Hill and Pudding Lane, etc, but no "roads"? Is there a good reason for this?

JH Jeffries, Brentwood, Essex

ATraditionally the word "road" was applied to a route from one place to another, while a "street" (or avenue, crescent, lane, alley, square and all the rest) were built-up thoroughfares with shops or houses on both sides.

All the thoroughfares within the City stayed there so were not roads to anywhere else. Also the word "road" only started to be applied in this sense in the 16th century, by which time the City's streets had all been named anyway.

Actually there is one part of a street called "Road" in the City and that is Goswell Road whose eastern half was brought into the City by boundary changes in 1994.

Have you ever noticed, incidentally, that when we say Fleet Street, or Vine Street, or Oxford Street or any other street, we put the stress on the word before "Street", but for Euston Road, or Northumberland Avenue, or Park Lane or Trafalgar Square or any other non-Street address, we stress the second part? We all do this, though few realise that is the case.

I confess I have no idea why this came about.

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